Tag Archives: engagement

SnapChat’s Viewability Advantage Over Facebook

What’s one of today’s prime digital advertising concerns? Viewability.

In case you’re out of the loop: Viewability is more or less a measurement of whether or not a video ad is actually viewed by an audience. (Seems odd, right? A marketer can buy and pay for an ad that was never “viewed.”) A number of factors contribute to the dwindling of this number from fast-scrolling users to bots and videos played “under the fold” or hidden in banners or buggy units.

That is why it should be very concerning that Facebook was recently accused of a less than 30% viewability rate by agencies using third-party measurement firms. Viewability is never going to be perfect and that’s OK — viewability is really just a proxy for “how much is my ad dominating that consumer’s attention” and that’s why agencies are measuring it. Some products and platforms will always perform better in this way… we love TV because that’s a big-ass screen with sight, sound and motion and I get all of it for a 30-second spot.

SnapChat’s ad product, by comparison, is extremely viewable. This is one reason that Snap has a huge advantage (esp. in terms of shifting TV ad spend), even though Facebook and Instagram have potentially slowed their growth. Snap’s ad product takes up the whole screen. It can’t be minimized, ignored or “tuned out.” Further, its users are completely engaged in the content — they’re burning the screen, skipping anything they deem unworthy of their attention. They’re leaning forward, right into your ad. Earn their consideration and you get a never-before-seen level of “dominating the consumer’s attention” for 10 seconds. It’s probably BETTER than TV.

Here’s SnapChat continuing to master product design and UI — it’s all about the user first… and just so happens to whet the advertisers’ demand for viewability.

Annoying, Unskippable Ads Get a Really Bad Rap — And Might Be Better for Us


Jason Hirshhorn piqued my interest quickly (maybe accidentally?) in the mix of his rantnrave on Redef today [bolding from me]:

All advertising is content, some more enjoyable than others. Sometimes the less enjoyable ads sell product better, using less of a viewer’s time.

That’s a great trade off for a viewer! The advertiser gets to sell HARD in exchange for not much of your time. I’d take that any day.

And yet, most advertising “quality scores” (a fundamental component of bidding algorithms aka getting a low CPM) would penalize an ad for local-car-dealership-style of hammering jingles, prices, locations and calls to action. And skippable ads obviously disincentivize consumers from watching brisk but sales-ey ads… they get annoyed and hit skip. It’s all in the name of “the user.”

I’m afraid that the ad networks, ad tech and technologists are favoring more insidious, “engaging” branded-content type ad creative because it supposedly puts the user first. We know that branded content is sometimes just manipulative… hiding the fact that it’s advertising in favor of engagement. So we need to be open to unskippable, “less enjoyable” ads and heavy calls to action — because sometimes they can be annoying, but they use less of our attention… and attention is way more valuable to the user and the platform.

An Outrageously Common YouTube Watch Time Misconception – The Real Definition

Watch Time is the most important metric that YouTube uses to promote and drive audience to a video. In a way, it’s the most important metric on any platform. Netflix uses very similar information to decide on the shows it renews, greenlights and licenses. Snapchat, Amazon and Facebook have been known to use a similar engagement metric too. But there’s one secret side of watch time that most creators completely miss.

The “basic” definition of Watch Time is how long people spend watching your video. Cool. It’s not how many people watch your video… it’s how long all of those people watch it for. And this is fine, colloquial way of looking at Watch Time. It’s a proxy for how engaged your audience is with your content. And that’s about all the information YouTube provides you with in the Watch Time section of your Analytics.

But it’s missing one, extremely important distinction. One critical precept of the definition. So many people miss this and it’s fundamental. Watch Time is not about how long people spend watching your video. It’s about how long people spend watching other videos, after they’ve watched yours. That’s right. Your video’s engagement only matters to the extent that it gets people in the mood to watch more content.

Don’t believe me? Read more about when YouTube announced this! It’s also defined in the YouTube Playbook like so:

YouTube optimizes search and discovery for videos that increase watch time on the site.

How could YouTube judge me based on something the users do after they watch my video? It would seem like you have no way of controlling what people do after watching your content. But that’s not true! Think about this from a psychological perspective. Your job is to engage viewers. If you’re successful at that, you should be able to increase watch time on the entire site of YouTube.

How? Firstly, you can just make “binge-worthy” content that hypnotizes people into watching subsequent videos in your series. Make sure you’ve got never-ending “rising conflict” to keep people hooked and subscribed. Or you can make videos that are incredibly effective at framing or promoting other videos that aren’t yours. In that way, you can actually boost watch time by simply being an outrageous curator.

You can also avoid things that are apt to get people out of the content-consuming mood.

  • For instance, don’t drive people off YouTube… it’s unlikely that they’ll come back. Don’t tell people to search, donate to your Patreon or go to your own .com.
  • And don’t make extremely short videos because it just opens more opportunities for people to get distracted. Short-attention-span content begets short attention spans — flakey users who will leave YouTube.com.
  • Another common misstep: pushing commenting and “liking” and sharing at the end of a video. In my experience, those actions are very low weight to the YT algorithm compared to watching more content. Asking people to be contribute in the comments or respond to a prompt will kick them out of consumption mode and into productivity mode.

Of course, there are reasons to break all of these rules in the name of your business model or goals… but you have to be aware of how they’re impacting watch time.

Reframe how you think about engagement and it might inspire you to address watch time in completely new ways. Remember this common misconception and you’ll have a secret edge compared to Creators who have no clue.